The pace of economic recovery will depend on the environment of the global financial and commodities markets

26 january 2016
| INA Rossiya Segodnya

The dollar and the euro were once again gaining on the ruble during trading on the Moscow exchange as the price of oil kept falling. However, experts say the ruble is losing value not just because of the falling commodity prices. Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency hosted a Round Table to discuss the likely causes of the current situation and possible ways to get out of this crisis. In their opinion, the rising exchange rates of foreign currencies are having even some positive effects: exporters are making more money, which means they are paying more tax, and in addition, as imports are getting more and more expensive, domestic products can compete against them more easily. However, considering the way the ruble has been collapsing over the past few days, these positive effects evaporate.

Daniil NametkinDepartment for Expert Analytics

“Oil is the main Russian export and the main source of money
for the treasury,” Daniil Nametkin, an expert of the Analytical Center,
noted. “If the price of oil falls further below 30 dollars a barrel, the
Russian ruble will get even more volatile.” In his view, the current situation
resulted from the problems that first appeared in 2009, but were never really
solved, and now we are witnessing a multiplied effect of the current situation
in the global economy, the accumulated structural problems and high consumer
debt.

“The pace of economic current recovery will depend on the
environment of the global financial and commodities markets. This does not mean
that we might as well sit back and do nothing, but we can not really
seriously expect that we’ll be able to quickly change the current trends”, Mr
Nametkin said. The expert admitted that making predictions about what
will be happening to the price of oil a month or two from now was very
difficult. However, he notes that most experts such as international financial
institutions and investment banks still expect that the average annual price of
oil will be above 35-40 dollars a barrel and that is encouraging. At
the same time, the expert said he could not rule out a worse case scenario with
oil falling to 20 dollars a barrel.

Video of the event is available on the website of the press
center of Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency.